A Visit With The Barker-Thornes

Saturday, July 6, 2013

The next morning we planned to head west to the little village of Sonning to visit our friends, the Barker-Thornes.  Andrew and Marjie’s son, Morgan, was in my class when we lived in Portland and I taught kindergarten, a million years ago.  Now, Morgan has just graduated and is ready to go off to university!  It is always remarkable to me to see how much my students grow and change, yet somehow, I haven’t managed to age at all!  Ha!  

We headed to Paddington Station via the Tube from our hotel.  The station was surprisingly crowded, as was the train to Reading that we boarded.  The last time we went to visit them, we had the train practically to ourselves.  This time, however, we were lucky to find 3 seats together, as it was, squeezing in with another party.  We noticed many of the passengers were all dressed to the nines, ladies in fancy summer dresses with fascinators clipped to their stylish up-dos, men looking smart in their slacks, sport coats draped casually over their shoulder.  When it was time to get off at our stop in the sleepy village of Twyford where Andrew was picking us up, we were dismayed when HUNDREDS of other passengers disembarked the train with us.  We were shoulder to shoulder with the crowds as we climbed the stairs and crossed over the tracks on the pedestrian bridge and down another set of stairs to the parking lot where Andrew was waiting for us and led us to his car, which he couldn’t even park into the lot due to the unusual number of taxis.  “What is going on?!” I asked.  Well, apparently the Henley Regatta was taking place, a rowing event where many Londoners of society head to see and be seen.  Ahhhh, well that explained it!

So he whisked us back to their home, “South Hill.”  Yes, that is its name--many homes in British villages have names instead of numbers.  

"South Hill"

The boys doing "Blue Steel"

Family portrait in front of the roses

Andrew and Marjie

Marjie and her handsome boys, Morgan (18) and Duncan (15), were there to greet us.  We lounged about and had a lovely afternoon, never short of interesting topics to discuss.  Their house sits on over 4 acres, and includes a beautiful arboretum, planted by a previous owner, which we walked around and were given a guided tour.  We learned that Andrew engages in “extreme mowing,” as it takes him FIVE HOURS (on a ride-on mower, mind you) to mow the grass!  We had a wonderful meal and spent several more hours chatting before we had noticed that it was already 7:15 and we needed to get the train back into London.  Andrew thought of a brilliant and successful plan to help us avoid all the Henley traffic, and drove us to another station, slightly further from their house, but an express train that didn’t stop at Twyford.  We timed it perfectly and made it back in no time.